Booing John Malkovich

It takes a lot to stir the emotions of Sydney theatre audiences, but sex on stage, sea shanties, Ben Hur or Barrie Kosky should do it.

By Joyce Morgan

5 February 2011 — 3:00am

Shakespeare's decadent young prince Hal (Ewen Leslie) was performing a sex act on John Gaden's Falstaff. The brief, confronting scene in the epic, edgy War of the Roses was too much for one man in the audience.

''You could hear people go 'hush, hush, hush','' Gaden says. ''There was a pause and then he yelled out, 'Disgusting.'''

The patron left soon after but the effect was palpable.

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''It actually put the audience on-side with us,'' Gaden says. ''They had to make a judgment about what this man had done.''

Such outbursts in Sydney are relatively rare. Indeed, incidents of audience displeasure are so infrequent they make news, as in the case of the booing and the rush for the exits during John Malkovich's Sydney Festival appearance in The Giacomo Variations.

Certainly a hostile local audience has never prompted an artist to stomp off mid-performance as tenor Roberto Alagna did at La Scala when he was booed in Aida in 2006. ''This is not a theatre, it's a Roman arena,'' he fumed. Nor can we match rock music's best-known interjection. At a Bob Dylan concert in 1966, as the singer was switching to an electric sound, an audience member yelled ''Judas''.

As the curtain goes up on the performing arts year, are Sydney audiences too timid? How prepared are we to express our disapproval or approval? What are we like to perform to? Compared with an Oprah Winfrey audience - and effusive North American audiences generally - we are a bunch of wallflowers. But is that any bad thing?

Masters of the sitting ovation is how Australian audiences have been described. We are a bit too polite, according to Belvoir's artistic director, Ralph Myers. In part he blames Wagner, with his dictates on ''appropriate'' audience behaviour.

''We've terrified people into staying silent … not knowing if there's some theatre Nazis who will jump on you if you applaud at the 'wrong' time,'' he says.

But it is also temperament. Australians generally are less inclined to express strong emotion - and not just in the theatre.

''I had a dreadful meal at a restaurant the other day, almost inedible,'' Myers says. ''The waiter came around and said, 'How is everything?' and I said, 'It's fine thank you.' I don't think it's necessarily just me. We have a tendency not to make a fuss.''

But occasionally we do, and invariably it is opera that draws the most passionate responses. Opera Australia still gets complaints about Barrie Kosky's Nabucco more than a decade on, says the chief executive, Adrian Collette. ''When subscribers write to me and tell me how much they hated [last year's] Tosca, they'll add a [postscript] saying, 'And I still haven't forgotten Nabucco.'''

His inbox overflowed with complaints about Christopher Alden's Tosca, which he set entirely in a shabby vestry and did away with Tosca's famous suicidal leap from the battlements. Even the programmed singer, Cheryl Barker, pulled out before opening night.

Not since director Ken Russell set Madam Butterfly in a Nagasaki brothel before the atomic bomb dropped - as he did for the Victoria State Opera some years ago - has an audience been so divided. Nothing prompts more brickbats than a director who shifts the setting of an opera.

''That is the most often complained-about thing,'' Collette says. But such objections need deconstructing, since plenty of productions shift time zones without complaint, such as Elijah Moshinsky's Fellinisque Rigoletto, Baz Luhrmann's '50s La Boheme or Raj-era A Midsummer Night's Dream.

''This bugbear people have about moving things from the period in which it's set is a bit of a furphy - they're actually complaining about something else, about why the production didn't work for them.''

He does not draw a distinction between Sydney and Melbourne audiences, but has witnessed a change in the way Sydney expresses its approval. At Carmen's opening night last month, the audience clapped in unison. It is the first time he can recall that happening, a style of approval seen in some European houses.

''The summer audience in Sydney is much more demonstrative,'' he says. ''I don't think it's just because the sun is shining. I think it's because we get massive tourist audience, from Italy, America. Of course, they're having a big night out at the Opera House, but they're bringing with them their unselfconscious enthusiasm.''

Mezzo Jacqueline Dark is sanguine about that Opera House phenomenon of audiences making for the exists as the singers take their bows. She notices a shift in responsiveness as the week progresses.

''On Saturday night they can have a few drinks because Sunday is a day off and they are much more relaxed. But Monday is a school night,'' she says.

Architecture, as much as art, can affect responses, says Richard Tognetti, leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

''The old Melbourne Concert Hall was quite dour so the audience felt quite restrained,'' he says. ''Angel Place is right there and so immediate and present, the audience feels the same. The Opera House has a sense of occasion to it.''

A silent audience can be the most attentive but it can be the hardest to read. And it can be particularly difficult for comedians. The amount of laughter can affect running times. Jonathan Biggins, the co-writer and performer of The Wharf Revue, says an ebullient audience can add an extra four minutes - about 5 per cent - to its running time.

''Sometimes you reach the end and bow and there's cheering and you go, 'Where the hell have you been for the last hour and a half?' You have to remind yourself that not everyone laughs out loud. Especially if you get a corporate group - they're cautious about, 'Are we allowed to laugh at this?,' and looking at the host. You can sense a reluctance to be the first,'' Biggins says.

The toughest audience is generally on opening night. With its brace of critics, industry insiders and freeloaders, this can be the audience most likely to sit on their hands. The exception is for musicals. It's an unwritten rule that if you want a standing ovation, appear in a musical.

''Often it's enginered by the publicist and the crowd they invite,'' Biggins says. ''Because it's very much a social, publicity event more than anything else, they engineer audiences to be more enthusiastic than they probably will be at any other time during the run.''

Manipulating audience responses has a long tradition. For centuries, European theatres and opera houses employed the services of the claque - people paid to laugh, clap or weep (some doubled as professional mourners) to order. Claqueurs weren't beyond a spot of extortion, threatening to boo if they weren't paid enough.

The claqueurs have gone from theatres but some have migrated online. The rise of social media has provided new platforms for those wanting to manipulate opinion. They provide running commentaries and even a verdict on a show before the performance is over. Social media also means that anyone can be a ''critic'' and, often behind a cloak of anonymity, tweeters and bloggers can talk up or pan a show. For those wanting to vent spleen, online forums attract a unique level of venom.

Lindy Hume, Sydney Festival director, acknowledges that the city's audiences are harder to pick than in Perth, where she directed its arts festival. Sydney is multiple audiences, she argues.

''I think I understood Perth audiences better by the time I finished the Perth Festival. I felt like I could program [knowing], 'Oh, they'll love this.' I'm not sure that is quite as easy in Sydney. They're a little less predictable.''

Sydney audiences can surprise, as Canadian performer Rick Miller found when he appeared in Bigger than Jesus at the festival. As part of the show, Miller pauses at one point to ask the audience if they have any questions. Typically, audiences remain silent. Not so in Sydney.

''It was the first time in years I've had questions thrown at me,'' Miller says.

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It was also the first time that the work he has performed in 25 cities across seven countries has ever drawn a protest. But on opening night about 35 banner-waving protesters gathered outside the theatre.

Sydney audiences, especially subscribers, are discriminating and educated, Gaden says. But he is yet to encounter an audience quite like the one in Germany at the Berlin Philharmonic a few years ago, which booed loudly after what he thought was a beautifully played Tchaikovsky symphony. His German friend explained the reason. Says Gaden: ''They didn't like the tempo of the scherzo.''